Swiss bank Banque Cantonale Vaudoise (BC Vaudoise) has reached resolution with the US Department of Justice (DoJ) over the tax evasion cases under the department’s Swiss bank programme.
The bank has agreed to pay a penalty of $41.6m to the US to avoid prosecution over allegations that it helped US citizens avoid paying taxes.
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Under the terms of the non-prosecution deal, BC Vaudoise agreed to cooperate in any related criminal or civil proceedings, demonstrate its implementation of controls to prevent misconduct involving undeclared US accounts and pay penalties.
The US DoJ in a statement said that the bank held a total of 2088 US related undeclared and not undeclared accounts with approximately $1.3bn in assets under management.
The bank offered a variety of traditional Swiss banking services including hold mail service, numbered accounts and code named accounts that assisted US taxpayers in hiding assets and income from the IRS.
BC Vaudoise had opened and maintained undeclared accounts beneficially owned by US taxpayers and held in the name of structures, which were formed in the British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Panama, Switzerland and the UK.
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By GlobalDataThe Justice Department added that the bank had several relationships with asset managers who brought 93 US taxpayer-clients to BC Vaudoise between August 2008 and February 2009.
The firm also permitted relationship managers to have direct contact with and accept instructions from US beneficial owner.
